Rwanda and more

There are over a million people living in two refugee camps in Africa. The problems in African rarely get the news coverage that problems elsewhere in the world receive. It is not farfetched to assume that there is a racial component to this type of coverage. Recall in the 1990’s almost a million were massacred in Rwanda and most were chopped to death with machetes. The UN observers stood by and watched as many recalled the words of the holocaust demanding that this never happen again. The genocide had a lasting and profound impact on Rwanda and its neighboring countries. The pervasive use of war rape caused a spike in HIV infection, including babies born of rape to newly infected mothers; many households were headed by orphaned children or widows DADAAB, Kenya — The Kenyan government is threatening to dismantle the world’s largest refugee camp, setting off a panic among the nearly 350,000 people who live here and the international aid organizations that care for them. Ethiopia has overtaken Kenya to become Africa’s largest refugee-hosting country after hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese arrived in the country this year. The total refugee population has reached almost 630,000, raising concerns that its capacity to help displaced people may be overstretched. News from today. Massive new displacements caused by conflict, violence and human rights abuses are likely to continue to affect many countries on the continent in 2015. The projected numbers of people of concern in Africa in 2015 are expected to decrease slightly (from 15.1 million in 2014 to 14.9 million), due to repatriation, resettlement and other durable solutions. Where is the outrage!

Light sweet crude

Oil is sometimes call black gold but that is misleading in one respect. Gold is the same in every mine but oil is very different depending on where it is found. Some oil, like that found in the United States is sweet and light meaning it is low in sulfur and low in other contaminants like heavy metals. Oil that is imported from Mexico and Venezuela is heavy and sour meaning high in sulfur and other contaminants. US refineries have been set up to process heavy oil and it takes time and money to convert them over to processing light crude. This change is underway and will be accelerated in the coming years. That is one of the reasons why we are still importing about 8 million barrels per day or about 40% of the 20 million barrels per day that we use. There are 140 refineries in the United States and they are close to maximum production. No new refineries have been built in many years and there are a couple of reasons for this. First is the cost, especially concerning the many new regulations that have come about in the past few years. The second is that it is more economical to add capacity to existing refineries than to build new ones. Since 1975 it has been illegal for the US to export oil but that changed this week so we will see an increase in exports which means light crude is going overseas but this will not stop the refineries from changing over to light oil as they know that long term US oil will keep increasing.

Ethan Couch

The case of Ethan Couch is interesting as it relates to some of the complaints from blacks about the unfairness of our justice system. For those of you not familiar with the case, this young man at age 16 was driving drunk and killed four people. He comes from a wealthy family and his lawyer presented a case based on affluenza. This is a new term which describes a young person spoiled to the point where he thought he was above the law. The lawyer was very persuasive and the jury convicted the young man and he got 10 years probation. Now picture if you will a young black kid in North Minneapolis driving drunk and killing four people and try to imagine him getting probation. Not likely! The latest word is that the Ethan and his mother have disappeared and believed to be out of the country. Who knows what’s going on there.

Coal and climate

While the United States is no longer building new coal fired power plants and is converting existing coal plants over to natural gas, countries like China and India are continuing to build new coal plants. The same thing is happening in South Africa. The price of oil has now dropped to where it is competitive with coal and the United States has an almost unlimited supply of oil. Oil is much cleaner than coal producing far less carbon dioxide, far less acid rain and far fewer heavy metals like mercury and lead. Shipping oil to Asia would have a significant impact on global trade while cleaning up the air pollution that is killing millions in China and India. Japan is replacing their nuke plants with coal when they could be using oil. Africa is building new coal plants. While all this is going on countries are holding meetings discussing the problem of climate change. Does anyone see the makings of a deal here? Is it possible that an outsider like Trump, the man who wrote, “The Art of the Deal”, could come up with a plan to save the planet from what President Obama says is our greatest threat? Are we so tangled up in our politics that we can’t see the forest for the trees.

War

I hear daily on the news that we are at war but the word war is a nebulous term whose meaning has changed over the years. Some say you are not at war until congress declares war but the last time that happened was WW 2. Some say Korea was a war and others say Viet Nam. Younger people talk about the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sometimes the phrase is trivialized like the war on poverty and the war on drugs. As I look back over the years and view all of the conflicts it seems that the last time we could declare victory was back to WW 2. Just how did that war differ from the battles that followed? The answer is complicated but one of the big differences was the willingness to deliberately kill civilians. One of the main strategies in getting complete surrender was to purposely target civilians. News stories about the big war all mention the use of atomic weapons but only a few describe the tactic of fire-bombing cities. While an estimated up to 200,000 were killed by the A-bomb, millions were killed in the fire-bombing of cities. In this war 60 million people were killed and most were civilians and this does not count the millions more who were injured. As war has become more civilized, excuse the oxymoron, it has become more difficult to totally defeat an enemy and so we are left with these endless conflicts and we best get used to it. The war on terrorism will likely go on for generations.

6th Grade

This week the Trump phenomenon reached new heights in my personal affairs when I was showing a movie to the 6th graders. The movie was “Home Alone 2” and in the middle of it Donald Trump shows up for about 2 seconds in the lobby of a large hotel and all the students in unison say there’s Donald Trump. It is my guess that you could question a 1000 sixth graders on the street and ask them to name some presidential candidate and you would get no answer. I admit that I have never seen The Apprentice TV show and don’t know how many in 6th grade have watched it but to me it is amazing that students this age would recognize Trump in a 2 second cameo role.

Trump skeletons

One of the great mysteries concerning the current political climate is why no skeletons have been found in Trumps closet. There must be a whole bevy of reporters searching everything he has ever said or did and yet nothing. Could all of those big business deals be all legit? He has two ex-wives and they both think he is OK and his five children seem to be above reproach.

Coal vs oil

Two very different events came together yesterday which indicate the total misunderstanding of the climate change problem. First the CEO of Ford announced they will spend 4.5 billion dollars on electric cars. This in and off itself is not that peculiar but the reason he gave was ridiculous. He said that since oil was a non-renewable resource he had to prepare for the day that it ran out, which he suggested would be in ten or so years. The Green River Formation in the Western United States has 3 trillion barrels of recoverable oil and that is enough to cover our needs for 2,700 years. The second thing was the congress passing a budget bill that included changing the existing law which prohibits the export of oil. The recent climate conference in Paris pointed out that the US has lowered its carbon emissions by switching away from coal and that Africa and Asia are increasing their carbon emissions by using coal. It is well known that oil produces less carbon dioxide than coal and the US is now in a position to send oil to these coal using countries. Perhaps this is the first step to moving toward natural gas which is much better for the environment than coal or oil. In all discussions about fueling the economy we must not lose track of the fact that the ultimate solution is hydrogen which will come in the future. Here the only bi-product is water.

Strong and wrong

Bill Clinton said, "When people are insecure, they'd rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who's weak and right," That is a tough choice but I agree with Clinton. My reasoning is that if I am strong I can change my mind when presented with new information but if I appear weak, I won’t be able to change. Using the current candidates for President, consider the differences between Trump and Carson. A guy like Trump could change his mind about a temporary stop to Muslims coming into the country but Carson could never project strength like Trump is doing. It is one thing to change your mind on an issue but quite another thing to change your personality. Even if you tried that, the people would see right through it. I don’t know what these two candidates are really like but Trump is perceived as strong and Carson is not. It might just be a lot of bombastic talk but the perception is that Trump is strong and Carson is not and more to the point, Obama based on recent polls, is seen as weak on terrorism.

Church fires

There was a Muslim Church set afire this week in California and this made news. Here are some other quotes from the news. Since 2003, 13 mosques around the country have suffered arson or bombing attacks. A spate of arsons this month at six predominately black churches in the St. Louis area has raised concerns that these incidents could be racially motivated. But they are by no means the first arsons at places of worship this year. As of July 14, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) had ruled 29 of 79 fires at houses of worship in 2015 to be arson, although some investigations were ongoing. Indeed, about half of all the fires at houses of worship in the past 20 years were intentionally set, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the ATF. Of the 4,705 reported fire incidents at houses of worship between 1996 and 2015, 2,378, or 51%, had been ruled intentional as of July.

Paris meeting

On President Obama’s inaugural tour of Europe he said that America was arrogant. "there have been times where America's shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" America is once again showing it’s arrogance by praising the recent environmental meeting in Paris. Lest we forget the western world went through the industrial revolution between 1750 and 1850 and it was done by using coal. Now we have countries in Africa and Asia that are going through their version of the industrial revolution and we point out to them how we have made improvements by switching to natural gas. If the true intention of this meeting was to confront the problem of global warming the whole thing would have centered around moving away from coal and onto oil and finally natural gas, but this is not what is going on. The purpose of this meeting was to transfer money from the developed world to the developing world and they succeeded with a promise of 100 billion dollars a year. Of this amount only 10 billion has been pledged and 3 billion of that is coming from the US. Another problem with transferring money to developing countries is that all too often the money is siphoned off and ends up in the hands of some unscrupulous leader. The President will not be depending on the senate to ratify this agreement as a treaty since that takes 67 votes and the last time this was tried was with the 1997 Kyoto protocol. A senate vote on the protocol was defeated 95 to 0 so the treaty was out. I find it interesting that the President says the Republican controlled senate will not pass this agreement when in fact the last time not one Democrat voted in favor.

Refugees

Trying to make sense out of the current controversy surrounding the closing of borders to Muslims is not as straight forward as if first seems. For example, President Obama some weeks ago suggest that we bring in 10 to 25 thousand refugees from Syria. There was some concern raised but most people felt it was the right thing to do. Then the terror attack in California came and muddied the waters. Next it was reveal that the engagement visa was not properly vetted and that caused more concern. Now we find out that many blank Syrian VISA’s and the printing machines needed to make VISAs are in the hands of the terrorist. It would be reasonable for President to call for a temporary halt in the refugee program until these issues can be clarified. Just to illustrate how complicate this can get, what if the president decided to temporarily halt the Syrian refugee program but offered an exemption to Syrians who are non-Muslim. Some would say even if you wanted to do this, how would you determine which Syrians are non-Muslim and of course the same question can be asked about which Syrians are really Syrians. Many of these refugees left with only the clothes on their backs and have little proof of who they are or where they come from. It seems it would be difficult to vet people who have so little background information. The government was caught unawares by the engagement VISA. Will there be other surprises down the road?

Crimes against Jews

There are about 6.7 million Muslims in the United States and about 5.4 million Jews. In the last few years, specifically anti-Muslim crimes have made up about 13 or 14 percent of hate crimes considered to be committed with a religious bias. That amounts to nearly 100 anti-Islam hate crimes each year from 2011 to 2013. As for crimes against Jews: The ADL counted 912 incidents in 2014, up from 751 in 2013. “The United States still continues to be unique in history” as a safe place for Jews, said Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s outgoing national director. “It’s still different here than anywhere else, but don’t take anything for granted, and be concerned,” Foxman said. Even though crimes against Jews are 7 times more frequent the crimes against Muslims get all of the publicity.

Non-voters

In the 2012 presidential election 126 million people voted and 93 million did not. The reason many give for not voting is they feel that there is no difference between candidates, no matter the party. Recall that George Wallace who ran as an independent said, there is not a dimes worth of difference between the democrats and the republicans. These same people may be looking at Trump as someone who is different and if 10% of them would come out and vote it could win the election. This may be one of the reasons that the Republican establishment does not want him to get the nomination because the fear he could win the election. This is contrary to what the experts say, since they are predicting an easy win for Clinton if Trump is the nominee but of course these people seem to be wrong about many things these days.

Iran and the rest

The recent remarks by Trump regarding Muslims have some people saying that this will cause a rift between the United States and our gulf ally’s and that is likely but when President Obama signed the treaty with Iran that caused a much bigger rift. The Shia Muslims of Iran are more threatening to the Sunni Muslims of the rest of the Middle East than any remarks made by any American. These countries are so afraid of the Shia dominated Iran that they are willing to allow Israeli airplanes to fly over their territory if they choose to attack Iran’s nuclear sites. It takes a lot of fear to align Israel with Saudi Arabia but the Iran nuclear deal has done just that.

School fights

St Paul teachers have threatened to strike because of unsafe working conditions caused by violence from students ST. PAUL, Minn. – Have the taxpayers of St. Paul spent nearly $3 million over the past five years to bring chaos and danger to their schools and students? Apparently so. In 2010, the St. Paul school district began a contractual relationship with the Pacific Educational Group, a San Francisco-based organization that tries to help public schools deal with achievement and disciplinary issues involving black students. PEG packages and sells the concept of victimization, for a very high price. Since these programs have started, the number of suspensions have dropped and other types of discipline have been softened. The result is that students who get into trouble are kept in school and incidences of fighting have increased. Here is what the group hired by the school district PEG believes. According to PEG, white culture is based on “white individualism” or “white traits” like “rugged individualism,” “adherence to rigid time schedules,” “plan(ning) for the future,” and the idea that “hard work is the key to success.” The minority cultures, according to PEG, value “color group collectivism.” This entails “fostering interdependence” and group success, shared property, learning through social relationships, and making life choices based on “what will be best for the family” or the group.

More on schools

Thankfully, I was wrong about the student who hit the teacher and he will be expelled. St. Paul Schools Superintendent Valeria Silva said in a letter sent to teachers Wednesday that a student was expelled from the district Tuesday. It would be the first time since Nov. 2009 that the school board has voted to expel a student, a district spokeswoman confirmed. This is some info from police records. Choi said that the juvenile case was the 27th to be presented to his office this year under a gross misdemeanor statute that protects school officials from being assaulted or harmed. He said that the cases have almost doubled in the past year, and also represent a 60 percent increase over the previous five-year average. These people are at a loss to explain what is going on but it could be that students have figured out that the chances of being expelled are very low. Here is a result of a story from 2013 about the Twin City schools. Nearly 14 percent of African American students in the district were suspended last year, according to district data obtained by MPR News. That compares to just 2 percent of white students. This was very disturbing so the district decided to take steps to reduce the racial discrepancies. Here is a quote from the schools attorney. “We cannot and will not tolerate this type of behavior in any of our schools.” That should take care of the problem.

Gun control

The issue of gun control comes to the forefront each time there is a shooting incident but nothing much ever happens. As a boy I had a shotgun and enjoyed the times I went hunting for rabbits, squirrels and quail and so I have nothing against guns but I am against the misuse of guns. Most agree that it is too late to ban guns even if it were possible since there are an estimate 300 million guns in the country. To try and confiscate those would be an impossible task. In order to get a better picture of the situation, imagine that there was no second amendment and there were no guns in the country. They were banned from day one. Anyone found with a gun would under arrest and charged with a felony. Would this eliminate the problem? Well, we have similar situations that we deal with on a regular basis. Drugs like heroin, cocaine and meth are and have been illegal for many years, yet the country is over flowing with these illegal substances. I would guess that if all guns were illegal, the criminals would still have guns. We could have a war on guns just like the war on drugs but it would likely not eliminate the problem of criminals having guns. The net result is that talking about gun control allows the people in power to appear to be doing something but in reality it just permits them to avoid looking at other solutions and when all the dust settles, nothing changes.

Cities

A famous quote says, power corrupts and this has proven to be true. One of the early examples was the Church of Rome and today we see what has happened to big cities which have operated under one party control for all too long. The liberals who lead these cities, combined with the power of unions have slowly and methodically corrupted the system. The recent revelations about the police are just the latest manifestation of this downward spiral. Chicago is the poster boy for this mess and gang violence combined with underfunded pension plans, the performance spread between white and students of color, the herding of low income people into the reservation type projects represents the latest in a string of crises. The Mayor recently announced the largest tax increase in the city’s history under the misguided concept that spending more money will solve the problem. This tax and spend policy is going on in big cities around the country and it will not change until there is a change in the leadership and that is not likely. The citizens of these cities, the majority of who are low wage minorities, have been convinced that the local government will take care of them, despite years of not doing so. It is even reflected in national polls that show that our black citizens roundly support President Obama even though things have gotten worse for them. While mostly white middle and upper income people have been benefiting from the recent job growth, those living in the inner cities have lost ground. Their unemployment is more than twice the national rate and their families have been torn apart.

Highway bill

Gasoline consumption has held steady or slightly declined over the past 20 years but the federal tax has remained the same at 18 cents per gallon resulting in a shortfall. Total miles driven, has declined and gas mileage has improved. The costs associated with road construction and repair, have risen but gas tax revenues have held steady. The shortfall has been around 16 billion dollars per year but the bill that is about to be passed will allow 300 billion over the next 5 years which should be enough to cover the shortfall and have some left over for new construction. This will be a boon to local economies around the country since most of the construction goes to local contractors. The gas tax has been criticized in the past for spending on things like highway beautification and transportation museums but this has amounted to less than ten percent of the funds. States who had on average added another 30 cent per gallon tax, often misuse the money more so than the federal government. For example Texas spends 25% of its gas tax money on schools. This was a bi-partisan agreement and shows the congress can work.

Rich giving

Back in 2010 a group of billionaires led by Gates and Buffet got together and formed a club of people who were willing to give away at least half of their wealth. This group, which now numbers more than 100, was recently joined by Face Book’s Mark Zuckerberg. He agreed to give away 99% of his 45 billion in stock and while I admire this, keep in mind that this still leaves him with 450 million dollars. This group has so far pledged over 500 billion to charity. This is certainly not their last two copper coins but it is something to be admired.

Coal and such

The President spoke today at the climate change meeting in Paris and said that the cost of solar has come down over the past ten years. Power from fossil fuel cost about $100 per megawatt-hour and solar has come down from $500 to $200. What he didn’t say was the solar represented 0.4% of total power in 1997 and it remains at 0.4% today. One of the main reasons the cost is lower is that government subsidies helped pay for the installation of solar panels and once installed the maintenance cost is low. The President then conflated the lower carbon dioxide emissions over the past years as having something to do with solar but this is not true. The most important change has been switching power plants from coal to natural gas and this was done primarily for economic reasons. The rapid increase in domestic natural gas production in the U.S. over the past 5 years has led to a rapid transformation of how electricity is produced. Coal has lost its perch as the undisputed champion of power generation, falling from 50-plus percent of total electricity generation to around 35 percent. Natural gas has grown from only 15 percent of total generation in 2005 to 30 percent in 2012. The lower cost of operating power plants comes from the increase in the availability of natural gas due to fracking and the lower labor cost at the plant associated with switching to natural gas. A report by the American Action Forum found that under the Obama administration coal mines shed 3,702 jobs from 2008 to 2013 and power plants shed 39,684 jobs. While natural gas was replacing coal in US power plants, coal exports increased from 40 million tons in 2003 to 125 million tons in 2014. While this coal is still being used the jobs have transferred from the US to Asia. This kind of activity is what labor unions claim is the uneven playing field with which American workers must contend. Jobs are being moved to China and so is the coal. The reasoning that this is reducing carbon dioxide emissions is flawed and these union people understand that.